3 ms·

Is ‘Empathy’ Really What the Nation Needs?

17 points by dpflan 10y ago

droopybuns 10y ago
That was a shocking article. Treating empathy with so much cynical suspicion feels blasphemous. I dont understand how anyone can have healthy relationships without some effort towards being empathetic.
- lambdasquirrel 10y ago
  While I agree with you, could I play devil's advocate for a moment? All ideals are unbalanced and thus have to be periodically challenged. All ideals can be corrupted. It takes empathy to design, and the more people that you reach with a product, the more that empathy matters, because the more people that that one product has to accommodate, and also because people will demand more of the product/service. Maybe the article is right in treating empathy with suspicion because empathy has been subsumed by other things. Among other things, there is the chase for raw user numbers. The homophobic and xenophobic rhetoric in the election was founded on exploiting empathy for the white working class. Whoever said that empathy had to be used for good?
  - droopybuns 10y ago
    I appreciate you taking the time to write this. I disagree with the original author- but your position is intriguing. It sounds like you place some kind of moral value on empathy. e.g. Empathy exists somewhere on the good to not good continuum. To me, empathy is like a telescope- neither good nor bad, it's just a way for reducing assumptions and trying to consume information- in this case- trying to understand another person's point of view without applying the filter of my own prejudices & beliefs. It never would have occurred to me that empathy is used for good or evil. I use it as a way of reducing assumptions.
- forgottenpass 10y ago
  It's funny that you chose the word "blasphemous." The conspicuous fervor around "empty" in recent years does feel like it shares some traits with religious belief. When a religion promotes a virtue, they don't invalidate the virtue. It can still be a positive. But they just tie a lot of baggage to the virtue. The ways it can be held, and forms in which it can be practiced are constrained, prescribed, and sometimes even contradictory. It makes people on the outside raise a suspicious eyebrow. The meme around "empathy" is not religious in nature, but is tied to (broad) social groups. And "having empathy" often means more than simply being empathetic. It should be treated with cynical suspicion. Articles like this give me hope the meme is about to pop.
  - droopybuns 10y ago
    My impression is that you are highlighting phoney empathy as a problem. If I'm wrong- I'd love to know it. I agree with that idea. But I'm coming to the realization that empathy is critical and most people do not practice it. This last election educated me about the number of people who espouse empathy and then follow it up with tantrums about how if you don't also hate $Candidate, then you are a racist sexist homophobe. It's phony empathy- or empathy when it's not inconvenient that is dangerous. It leads to moral self licensing- where terrible behavior or failure to do something meaningful is justified by the fact that a) people they disagree with are bad and b) they did that empathetic sounding tweet that one time memes should not pop by the way- they're a powerful indicator of the mental self-reliance and thoughtfulness of the speaker. I don't want them to die. I want them to live on so I know who to avoid.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
acconrad 10y ago
Why wouldn't it? If you really want to be pessimistic about empathy, you can rationalize it as information-gathering. Being empathetic and understanding as to why your opponent feels the way they do only helps you frame a better argument in future battles. I see no downside to empathy.
hyperion2010 10y ago
Yes we do. But good luck getting a poor white in Appalachia (who probably didn't even vote) to realize that he has far more in common with a poor black in Chicago than a Yankee carpetbagger from New York. While we are playing the wishing game let's bump everyone's IQ up to the current equivalent of 140, that might help a bit, oh, and throw in a good liberal education and solid home life as well.
- eevilspock 10y ago
  > While we are playing the wishing game let's bump everyone's IQ up to the current equivalent of 140, that might help a bit, oh, and throw in a good liberal education and solid home life as well. I'm sorry, but I'm not sure that IQ correlates to goodness in this world. A lot of really smart people use those smarts for personal gain at the expense of the greater good, and even truth. The "smart" and logical strategy in the Prisoners Dilemma is the cynical one. So we all lose. What we need is a boost in Courage Quotient and Empathy Quotient[1] and a drop in our Self-Interest Quotient. Or perhaps we should all take psychedelics: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13069097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13069097 -- [1] Hess's probable above average IQ did not prevent her from doing a completely misguided hatchet job on "empathy".
ValleyOfTheMtns 10y ago
>Empathy suggests something more technical — a dispassionate approach to understanding the emotions of others. And these days, it often seems to mean understanding their pain just enough to get something out of it — to manipulate political, technological and consumerist outcomes in our own favor. Suggestion for a new title: "How I Redefined the Meaning of Empathy and Wrote an Article About It"
peterwwillis 10y ago
The author seems to assert that empathy is being used as a cheap tool to subvert differing opinion out of self-interest. And it is true, some people sometimes act out of self-interest. Like self-preservation. You know, like if you're muslim, black, mexican, a woman, trans, gay, a member of the press, concerned about the environment, etc you probably perceive all the threats Trump has been making at you for a year. In order to prevent your new President from making good on all the threats he's made against you, you might want to try to get through to his supporters. Because maybe you don't want to be oppressed. So the crazy idea is that maybe we should employ empathy as a tool to understand the people who voted in favor of taking away our rights and setting back the clock of social progress by 70 years. That maybe by understanding their emotions and what drives them, we might be able to reach them, build some kind of common bond, and keep them from hurting us. This is apparently really shitty of us. I have never read another article where someone comes so close to understanding an idea and then zooms past it on rocket skates.
tunesmith 10y ago
What a bizarre article. I can't tell if the author has absolutely no concept of what empathy actually is, or is just willfully redefining it because they have column space to fill. She has sympathy and empathy precisely backwards. Sympathy is the dispassionate one, empathy has the emotional connection. It's true that facebook is guilty of co-opting empathy into a feel-good marketing phrase, but that's not exactly unprecedented. It doesn't mean they've changed the definition of the word. At any rate, add this to the list of the wrong lessons we can learn from the election. Being empathetic to someone doesn't mean enabling them or being complicit in their beliefs. It's an emotional connection that can possibly change their views, but just as well might change yours. The point of it is the connection, not the intent to change minds - it's seeking to understand for understanding's sake, not to use the knowledge to then manipulate them. One of my fears is that people will use the election to learn the lesson that facts and truth don't matter anymore, that we as well should also go right ahead and turn into wannabe political rhetoric specialists, lying and manipulating and abdicating our own roles in defending rational dialectic.
- forgottenpass 10y ago
  I can't tell if the author has absolutely no concept of what empathy actually is Does anyone publicly talking about empathy know what it means? I've heard it used to mean "not being a sociopath" all the way to "agreeing with the precursors to my political opinions," and many stops in between.

17 points by dpflan 10y ago

That was a shocking article. Treating empathy with so much cynical suspicion feels blasphemous. I dont understand how anyone can have healthy relationships without some effort towards being empathetic.

lambdasquirrel 10y ago
While I agree with you, could I play devil's advocate for a moment? All ideals are unbalanced and thus have to be periodically challenged. All ideals can be corrupted. It takes empathy to design, and the more people that you reach with a product, the more that empathy matters, because the more people that that one product has to accommodate, and also because people will demand more of the product/service. Maybe the article is right in treating empathy with suspicion because empathy has been subsumed by other things. Among other things, there is the chase for raw user numbers. The homophobic and xenophobic rhetoric in the election was founded on exploiting empathy for the white working class. Whoever said that empathy had to be used for good?
- droopybuns 10y ago
  I appreciate you taking the time to write this. I disagree with the original author- but your position is intriguing. It sounds like you place some kind of moral value on empathy. e.g. Empathy exists somewhere on the good to not good continuum. To me, empathy is like a telescope- neither good nor bad, it's just a way for reducing assumptions and trying to consume information- in this case- trying to understand another person's point of view without applying the filter of my own prejudices & beliefs. It never would have occurred to me that empathy is used for good or evil. I use it as a way of reducing assumptions.
forgottenpass 10y ago
It's funny that you chose the word "blasphemous." The conspicuous fervor around "empty" in recent years does feel like it shares some traits with religious belief. When a religion promotes a virtue, they don't invalidate the virtue. It can still be a positive. But they just tie a lot of baggage to the virtue. The ways it can be held, and forms in which it can be practiced are constrained, prescribed, and sometimes even contradictory. It makes people on the outside raise a suspicious eyebrow. The meme around "empathy" is not religious in nature, but is tied to (broad) social groups. And "having empathy" often means more than simply being empathetic. It should be treated with cynical suspicion. Articles like this give me hope the meme is about to pop.
- droopybuns 10y ago
  My impression is that you are highlighting phoney empathy as a problem. If I'm wrong- I'd love to know it. I agree with that idea. But I'm coming to the realization that empathy is critical and most people do not practice it. This last election educated me about the number of people who espouse empathy and then follow it up with tantrums about how if you don't also hate $Candidate, then you are a racist sexist homophobe. It's phony empathy- or empathy when it's not inconvenient that is dangerous. It leads to moral self licensing- where terrible behavior or failure to do something meaningful is justified by the fact that a) people they disagree with are bad and b) they did that empathetic sounding tweet that one time memes should not pop by the way- they're a powerful indicator of the mental self-reliance and thoughtfulness of the speaker. I don't want them to die. I want them to live on so I know who to avoid.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

acconrad 10y ago

Why wouldn't it? If you really want to be pessimistic about empathy, you can rationalize it as information-gathering. Being empathetic and understanding as to why your opponent feels the way they do only helps you frame a better argument in future battles. I see no downside to empathy.

hyperion2010 10y ago

Yes we do. But good luck getting a poor white in Appalachia (who probably didn't even vote) to realize that he has far more in common with a poor black in Chicago than a Yankee carpetbagger from New York. While we are playing the wishing game let's bump everyone's IQ up to the current equivalent of 140, that might help a bit, oh, and throw in a good liberal education and solid home life as well.

eevilspock 10y ago
> While we are playing the wishing game let's bump everyone's IQ up to the current equivalent of 140, that might help a bit, oh, and throw in a good liberal education and solid home life as well. I'm sorry, but I'm not sure that IQ correlates to goodness in this world. A lot of really smart people use those smarts for personal gain at the expense of the greater good, and even truth. The "smart" and logical strategy in the Prisoners Dilemma is the cynical one. So we all lose. What we need is a boost in Courage Quotient and Empathy Quotient[1] and a drop in our Self-Interest Quotient. Or perhaps we should all take psychedelics: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13069097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13069097 -- [1] Hess's probable above average IQ did not prevent her from doing a completely misguided hatchet job on "empathy".

ValleyOfTheMtns 10y ago

>Empathy suggests something more technical — a dispassionate approach to understanding the emotions of others. And these days, it often seems to mean understanding their pain just enough to get something out of it — to manipulate political, technological and consumerist outcomes in our own favor. Suggestion for a new title: "How I Redefined the Meaning of Empathy and Wrote an Article About It"

peterwwillis 10y ago

The author seems to assert that empathy is being used as a cheap tool to subvert differing opinion out of self-interest. And it is true, some people sometimes act out of self-interest. Like self-preservation. You know, like if you're muslim, black, mexican, a woman, trans, gay, a member of the press, concerned about the environment, etc you probably perceive all the threats Trump has been making at you for a year. In order to prevent your new President from making good on all the threats he's made against you, you might want to try to get through to his supporters. Because maybe you don't want to be oppressed. So the crazy idea is that maybe we should employ empathy as a tool to understand the people who voted in favor of taking away our rights and setting back the clock of social progress by 70 years. That maybe by understanding their emotions and what drives them, we might be able to reach them, build some kind of common bond, and keep them from hurting us. This is apparently really shitty of us. I have never read another article where someone comes so close to understanding an idea and then zooms past it on rocket skates.

tunesmith 10y ago

What a bizarre article. I can't tell if the author has absolutely no concept of what empathy actually is, or is just willfully redefining it because they have column space to fill. She has sympathy and empathy precisely backwards. Sympathy is the dispassionate one, empathy has the emotional connection. It's true that facebook is guilty of co-opting empathy into a feel-good marketing phrase, but that's not exactly unprecedented. It doesn't mean they've changed the definition of the word. At any rate, add this to the list of the wrong lessons we can learn from the election. Being empathetic to someone doesn't mean enabling them or being complicit in their beliefs. It's an emotional connection that can possibly change their views, but just as well might change yours. The point of it is the connection, not the intent to change minds - it's seeking to understand for understanding's sake, not to use the knowledge to then manipulate them. One of my fears is that people will use the election to learn the lesson that facts and truth don't matter anymore, that we as well should also go right ahead and turn into wannabe political rhetoric specialists, lying and manipulating and abdicating our own roles in defending rational dialectic.

forgottenpass 10y ago
I can't tell if the author has absolutely no concept of what empathy actually is Does anyone publicly talking about empathy know what it means? I've heard it used to mean "not being a sociopath" all the way to "agreeing with the precursors to my political opinions," and many stops in between.